Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The
writers for American soap operas such as “As
the World Turns” would have to really, really dig deep to come up with a script built on unrequited love to beat the primitive,
tribal family in Pakistan that recently stoned their pregnant
daughter to death. She wanted to marry the man she was in love with,
not the man Papa arranged, and Papa and the boys - her brothers - took
offense at her insolence. So they stoned her to death. And they did
it in front of the Lahore, courthouse!

According
to a news report from CBS/AP:

“May
27, 2014. (Yes, 2014!) LAHORE, Pakistan- A woman
was stoned to death by her own family in front of a Pakistani high
court on Tuesday for marrying the man she loved, police and a defense
lawyer said.

Nearly
20 members of the woman's family, including her father and brothers,
attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in broad daylight
before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore,
said police official Naseem Butt. He said Farzana Parveen, 25, had
married Mohammad Iqbal, with whom she had been engaged for years in
opposition to her family.”

The article continues:

"...Parveen's
relatives waited outside the court, which is located on a main
downtown thoroughfare. As the couple walked up to the court's main
gate, the family members fired shots in the air and tried to snatch
her from Iqbal, he said.

When
she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started
beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby
construction site, Iqbal said.

Iqbal,
45, said he started seeing Parveen after the death of his first wife,
with whom he had five children.

"We
were in love," he told The Associated Press. He alleged that the
woman's family wanted to fleece money from him before marrying her
off.

"I
simply took her to court and registered a marriage," infuriating
the family, he said.

Butt,
the police official, said Parveen's father surrendered after the
incident and called the murder an "honor killing."

The
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private organization, said in
a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in so-called
honor killings in 2013.”

Wow,
top that scenario, you writers at As the World Turns,
or the writers at General Hospital, or any of the
remaining soap operas on American television where true love and
marital infidelity are the core reason millions of American women,
and a few men as well, watch television every day. I bet American, or
Spanish and Latin American soaps for that matter, aren't broadcast on
Arabian or Farsi TV systems. Erika Kane, and three or four thousand
other characters, would never have made it out of Pine Valley alive.

The
entire world mobilized in protest to save 230 young Nigerian women
kidnapped by Boco Haram Islamic radicals in
Borno State on April 15, 2014.
Where
is the anger over 869 women killed by husbands and fathers in
Pakistan in 2013 alone because of religious grounds? Professional
courtesy among religions? You don't comment on our brutality and
sexual aberrations and we won't comment on yours?

In
any other civilized country, murder charges would normally be
filed against the killers. But we are talking about a civilization
mired in its religion of almost two thousand years ago. It was cruel
then, it is cruel now. If there were a god, he would cry at the loss
of his daughter and grandchild.

The
airline terminal at LaHore is actually a time warp civilized people
pass through to get to that primitive, medieval partition of planet
Earth where you could easily get killed if you believe in the wrong
god, while the ones who kill their own daughters are considered
honorable men.

Can I
make it worse? Yes, I can! Remember, the Pakistanis have nuclear
weapons.

[Update: May 31st, 2014. Bowing to International Pressure, the murderers have been arrested, and the police who stood by and watched as they killed her are under investigation. The updated story at:

Thursday, May 1, 2014

“Would that mean you would move to the east or learn to coexist
with the west state?”

The anonymous comment awaiting moderation about The Case for Two
Floridas – Revisited blog caught my attention. I don't usually
respond to anonymous comments, you know who I am, so return the
favor and let me know who you are. I usually just delete them, but this time, however, I'll try to qualify my position and explain why it appears I parachuted behind enemy lines.

I was raised in Miami, and left what was really just a seasonal
tourist town when I joined the Air Force way back in December, 1960. You know,
off to see the world and that kind of stuff. Eight years later, –
five and a half of which were spent in Germany – recently
discharged and married, ready to raise a family, I returned to Miami
and was surprised by the city that was on the verge of International
big-time. Working in downtown Miami for thirty years, watching Miami
win a couple of Super Bowls and later become the backdrop for a
popular, modern television show that soon became the most watched
show in America, I saw Miami evolve into a unique, International city
unmatched by any other in the United States. When I retired, family,
finances, and physics dictated our reluctant relocation from Miami so
we moved through the time warp that separates the east coast from the
west coast and settled in Port Charlotte. It's on the map, trust me.

We were fooled by the north/south rhetoric that pervaded Florida's
politics. I was raised knowing the “porkchoppers” as the state
legislature was known by everyone in South Florida, treated Miamians
as foreigners way before any Cuban refugees arrived. What I got
wrong was Tallahassee, Capitol of Florida, holding pen of the
porkchoppers, isn't just in the north half, it is in the western half
as well. And that is what I missed. We had dear friends who left
Miami and relocated in Hernando County in a beautiful waterfront home
with Gulf of Mexico access. Still, within several years, they were
back on the east coast. I assumed it was because they were north of
I-4 and their visa expired, but in retrospect I now know it was
because they were west of I-75!

There are pockets of resistance in either of the two proposed new
Floridas. I know for certain there are people still stuck in the
fifties tonight in Fort Lauderdale! There is no doubt in my mind the
Villages will rise up in anger, as far up as they can at least, for
being on the wrong side of the Interstate. They won't be able to
fight after nine at night and they certainly aren't going to hire
anyone to do it for them, so they just may be stuck. But then again,
they might get a lot accomplished before tee-time. They do tend to
get up early there. They'll have a golf-cart strike and cripple the
industry if they don't get their way.

The sixteen years we have lived here in west Florida, not far from a
John Birch Retirement Center, gives me an insight to the two Floridas
many politicians don't have. Living with people who are terrified of
driving to Miami, who have never been there and who will never in
their lives drive south of Disney World except down I-4 to I-75,
gives me an analytical edge here. I don't just coexist in west
Florida, no coexist isn't the right word. I've become a guerilla
fighter. A stealth influence on the unsuspecting retirees who still
keep Lawrence Welk alive on PBS. Some of them even now listen
occasionally to Jimmy Buffet. Well, not often, but maybe every once
in a while. We have found an underground network of like-minded
people here who sweeten their own tea. And that is progress.